Re: Theory about the evolution of languages

Chris Bates said:
> Complexity tends to remain constant in languages: as one area of the
> language becomes less complex, another will tend to gain in complexity.
> I don't have any proof of this, but I know some other people on the list
> hold this opinion too. :)
Although I'm sure there can be some definition of 'complexity' under which
that might be generally true, I'm inclined to believe that it's not likely
to be generally true under more pedestrian notions of complexity.

What *is* generally true is that aggregate changes in a community's speech
tend to influence subsequent changes. It's just that "conservation of
complexity" doesn't seem to be the underlying pattern of such influence.


> What do you mean by saying English has 3 cases? I count two, only
> marked in the pronoun system: Subject, vs Object/Oblique.
Some people describe English as having a subjective, objective and
possessive (or nominative, accusative and genitive) case.


-- Mark